Talking Tactics With Mark Bright : Man City

8 April 2015

Mark Bright gives his thoughts on Monday night's excellent victory over Manchester City at Selhurst Park.

Great win enjoyed by all, I think it’s fair to say, against Manchester City.

A game in which City desperately needed to win to stay in touch with leaders, Chelsea, they threw everything they had at Palace but in the end, with some good defending, hard work and luck the team toughed out a great result to make it three wins in a row in the Premier League for the first time this season. With Sunderland, WBA and Hull up next we have the opportunity to extend this good form in the coming weeks.

City and their multi-million pound squad set up in a 4-4-2 formation which was flexible to say the least with Yaya Toure playing a deeper role in the first half next to holding midfield player Fernadinho making it a 4-2-3-1 at times with Sergio Aguero dropping into the No 10 role.

The promotion winning trio of Wilfried, Yannick and Glenn, who once graced the Championship, now terrorise Premier League defences but in this game they had to work hard defensively as opposed to offensively as they normally do and what a job they did for the team.

With the England manager in attendance I don’t think Scott Dann did his prospects any harm showing his composure under pressure and his distribution from the back was excellent at times.

I said it before and I’ll say it again, I’m a big fan of Glenn Murray’s, and he’s delivering at the highest level with his fifth goal in his last five games, or his tenth game and fifth goal whichever way we look at it, he’s bang in form.

Glenn’s aerial ability was evident, an early jump, hang time and finest of touches wasn’t capitalised upon in the first half with wide men Zaha and Bolasie not close enough to him to make the most of the knock on. The manager played both wide men closer to Glenn in the second half increasing their chances of getting onto the end of his headers with a better starting position.

Concerns regarding how much possession we did or didn’t have don’t really bother me too much, our 33% possession with two shots at goal compared with their 67% and seventeen shots does seem very one sided, but resolute organised defending doesn’t appear on any stat sheet, but it’s an essential part of the game.

Against the top five or six teams we have always had a lot less possession, it’s against the mid to lower end of the table teams we need to improve against. I’m sure the manager will work on that with a full pre-season to go at in the summer.

A well-executed free kick from Jason Puncheon gave us a two goal cushion, but another good goal from Yaya Toure on 78 mins set the alarm bells ringing, desperate situations require desperate measures and Manuel Pellegrini sent on Frank Lampard, Samir Nasri and James Milner to no avail, the crowd played a massive part throughout the match and particularly towards the end of the night when the players needed them most.

place in the league. An away trip to Sunderland is up next, let’s keep this winning run going.th39 points with seven games remaining puts us in a great position to beat last year’s tally of forty five points and 11